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The New Siberians

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The photo doesn't picture the typical Siberian I'd say. Looks like these are natives or Buryatia (which is actually a part of Siberia next to Mongolian border)

Pics of a typical Siberian: https://www.google.com/search?q=%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B1%D0%B8%D1%...

> Siberian-ism, a regional patriotism distinct from (European) Russia, is growing.

It was always present, I was raised ~60 miles from Moscow. Regional patriotism was present at all times, "The Moscow Person" was always someone from another planet. They had everything, and everyone outside Moscow knew that Moscow lives because of draining resources from the other regions.

Also, translation of "How Siberians are different from Russians": https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&u=https%3...

It's weird to me that the google search for "сибиряки" shows these old photos. I guess the term has fallen out of use? Here's a more modern search: https://www.google.com/search?q=%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B1%D0%B8%D1%...

Right, it is something like "people of America" vs "Americans". Interesting observation.

Depending on one’s locality and bias, “the typical Siberian is a white person” may or may not ring true. In large cities people would seem predominantly white or mixed. Going into smaller towns it is much less clear-cut, and further away you’ll find villages without a single non-indigenous resident (read: everyone is Asian-looking). In such regions indigenous languages have official status alongside Russian, which they are not mutually intelligible with.

In my opinion it is entirely fair to illustrate an article about Siberians with a photo representing one of the many native peoples.

Source: grew up in a region of Russian Siberia with less than 60% of ethnically Russian residents per last census, most of which from my observation concentrated in and around the largest municipality. Taking that number at face value is, of course, assuming that all of the indigenous people, many of whom don’t speak Russian and live in remote villages, were counted in the 2010 census and declared their ethnicity “correctly”.

For some reason I had thought Shoygu was siberian, but no, he's tuvan.

From the east coast[1], there's always Kola Beldy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrBtOTstM-4 shown here with the glass-front planes mentioned elsewhere on HN.

(I learned of this song from "Spitting Image", where the artist covering it not only did an ethnicity, but also gender, swap.)

A more recent altai music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik1Y88n1Uog

(Thumb rings were a steppe invention making it easier to hold a drawn hunting bow.)

[1] Песни чтоб из Магадана / телевизор у дивана / Водку закусить бананом / любит наш народ.

I am from Siberia (Omsk, Russia). While some of the things in this article are true (distrust for Moscow, openness and straightforwardness, feeling separated from the rest of Russia), I want to note that there always were hot summers in Siberia. While the current heatwave is beating records, when you see +38C in Verkhoyansk, you should keep in mind that there weren’t Arctic temperatures in summer, +35C happened quite routinely there). The changes are not enough to form “a new identity”... I think.

Also, one thing that Russian powers-that-be absolutely cannot stand is separatism. We always joked that “it’s time to ditch Moscow” and the like, but any real attempt will be met by crushing force, nobody has any illusions about that.

It's the same in the Canadian north (very similar bioregion); The continental climate is extreme. Hot summers, cold winters.

I do get the sense though that the Siberian winter was traditionally more 'stable' than what we get in North America. Our winters can cycle from extreme cold to fairly warm from day to day. A lot of plants with their genetic origins in Siberia don't do well in the Canadian north because they are not adapted for the swings, despite being hardy for extreme temperature lows. (Example: Vitis amurensis, the wild 'Amur' grape will break dormancy quickly and so gets fooled by the many false springs we get here. Our native hardy northern grape, Vitis riparia requires more coaxing to come out of dormancy)

In any case, aggregate temperatures are going up. The number of extreme days increases. It's not that we didn't have hot days before, it's the frequency of it that's worrisome, from the POV of permafrost retention, forest fires, etc.

Yea, I remember watching an older (80s?) documentary about siberia, and distinctly remember mentioning hot, but short, summers with mosquito plagues.

Mosquitoes also feature strongly in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_People:_A_Year_in_the_Ta... (2010)

I highly recommend the original 4-part film, not the old hippie moralist fairy tail that is the Herzog version - speaking as an Herzog fan! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcHbZZPce_ZMUuYr5u6sx...

Great series! Thanks!

Yes this must've been it - I don't know why I thought it to be much older.

Not sure if it was Siberia exactly, but I was watching a clip from some nature documentary in a generally cold-and-north region and seeing massive swarms of mosquitoes weakening animals.

I've lived in the southeast US my whole life and I thought mosquitoes were bad here in thesummer.

Could it have been black flies instead of mosquitoes?

Blood is their favorite meal and they're known to swarm humans and animals alike in large numbers:

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Black_Fly_Attack_o...

Mosquitoes at least have the courtesy the use a proboscis to remove your blood. Black flies just rip off a chunk of flesh to get what they're after, which I believe is reason that large swarms of them can seriously injure animals.

yep, from personal experience :), a 3cm long black fly makes about a 3mm long cut, and it seems it injects something like anticoagulant into the cut, and it can bite even through clothes like jeans where the cloth touches skin, and yes, they come in droves.

Wrt. separatism - not in next 50-100 years for any locally grown separatism. Too small number of people on that gigantic territory of too diverse ethnic makeup. With climate change the population will grow and some places becoming nice will get higher population of higher density with some shared identity. That wouldn't be Russians - Russian demographics is falling. No other ethnicity there also have numbers and demographic trend to accomplish it in the observable future. So, most probably it will be Chinese immigrants in the Far East. There are already a lot of them there, and the numbers are growing fast - again nobody else is able to populate and develop those territories with needed intensity, so Russia lets, as there is not much choice really, them come to fill the vacuum so to say. China also considers some of those territories historically theirs. That means that China wouldn't let anybody else to bite that piece. In some decades there will be a period of time when Russia gets into deep crisis (like say change of President because of Putin dying in 2050? :) and that's when the even more powerful China will make the move. A Far East version of Crimea. In a modern Russian fantasy novel (by Pelevin?) about near future the Chinese hieroglyphs naming Russia are directly translated as "temporary administration of the northern gas pipelines" :)

The tail end of this video on the “coldest town in the world”, https://youtu.be/l1noUh2NrLI, mentions both factors and that they combine to be more unpleasant than the cold.

Apparently bloodsucking mosquitoes and biting flies.

Looks like the last time separatism was tried were the Whites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_All-Russian_Govern...

I've seen music videos from Perm and Novosibirsk, can you recommend any from Omsk?

I am originally from Moscow and I always had great respect for Siberia and its people. I just watched "Happy People" series referenced below. Amazing!

"Ditch Moscow" - "Moscow" it is not a geography:) There are plenty of people in Moscow (and the rest of the country) just like you. And I am sure you have shitheads is Siberia too. I wish we could drain the swamp, wherever it is.

Whether or not the heat record is as extreme as presented, the fact is the arctic is getting warmer twice as fast as the world as a whole. And that is leading to huge changes, most notably permafrost melting, which has all sorts of consequences like destroying infrastructure on a massive scale.

This article as superficial as it gets.

Siberian separatists are as real as Texas ones. Yes, both regions have their unique cultural identity and certain amount of distrust towards federal government, but both will not gain independence without some cataclysmic event destroying the respective countries as we know them.

Also compared to Tatarstan, "Siberian separatism" is a complete joke. During the "parade of sovereignties" Tatarstan has declared its independence and it got supported in 92s referendum [0]. For various reasons it was not true independence in the end, but even today Tatar elites are quite strong and have a certain degree of independence from the Moscow government.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Tatarstani_sovereignty_re...

> Siberian separatists are as real as Texas ones.

Having grown up in Moscow, I’ve never heard of those Siberian separatists. However, in my almost two decades in the US I haven’t gone a year without Texan separatism becoming a topic in my social circle.

This observation is made without controlling for my age or current political climate, so a hunk of rock salt is in order.

This is the kind of narrative I expect when the powers that be want to separate a part of a country. This is clearly an attempt to separate Russia from its Siberian wealth. For a textbook example of getting a part of a country via generating an independence movement see the history of Panama (former Colombia province).

Or, for more recent and perhaps relevant examples: Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and the Donetsk Republic.

Or, for slightly less recent but perhaps just as relevant examples: Moldova, Georgia, and, most of all, Ukraine.

Ah yes, those famous provinces of Russia, which but for the intervention of some meddling foreigners would have no language, culture, history, or national identity of their own.

At least with Georgia, if it were not for Russian empire, there wouldn't be any Georgia today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_within_the_Russian_Emp...

Why the strawman? I believe all these separatist movements involve preexisting national identity, both ones I listed and ones you listed.

The irony of Russia complaining about separatism when that’s their favorite tactic to keep the near abroad in check.

"Near abroad". Do you recognize the origins of this strange term?

If you don’t recognize the term your commentary on the ex-USSR may not be meaningful

I do. For readers who don't: it's newspeak invented after Soviet administrative borders became international, to make us slightly less uncomfortable with the idea that we are suddenly "abroad" from each other.

By the end of this year Airstrip One[1] will have always been part of Oceania.

See also California, Texas, Hawaii[2], Philippines (1899-1901)[3], Vermont, Republic of West Florida, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_(military)

In local context, Valais, Neuchâtel, and Geneva[4].

Less recently, the scots-irish in northern ireland, cyprus, korea, israel, not to mention Lawrence of Arabia or the former ottoman balkans in general[5].

The mongols are said to have offered neighbouring cities the thirteenth century equivalent of "plata o plomo", although in their case the silver would flow the other direction...

In ancient context, the opening lines of the Melian dialogue occur with the Athenian delegation saying "everyone in this room knows why you all force us to address the aristocracy instead of the people — you all know the people would be unable to refuse our offer."

Too many to bother looking up in between and before, so I won't multiply examples.

[1] The US no longer needs B-52's for aerial minelaying. I don't know how much mining might affect Brest, but it would certainly be a bummer for Rotterdam and Genoa. I trust brit HN'ers won't wind up eating chlorinated chicken but I guess we have to wait for Oceanian domestic politics to resolve before that question will be answered. In any event, the UK mantle of "inside the tent, pissing in" seems to have already been passed to poland and hungary.

[2] which came over wholesale, not retail, so maybe it shouldn't count. If it does, maybe we can add the original 13 colonies, as what would become canada frankly declined to join them.

Contrary to popular opinion, I believe "Екатерина, ты была не права" would be anachronistic if referring to Alaska, and refers instead to Catherine's sudden refusal to send George any troops to help put down the bitter dead-ender terrorists (and, later, foreign fighters) who famously had had an arms cache in Concord.

[3] with current interest in southeast asian sea routes, I bet the USN would like to have Subic Bay back. Unfortunately at the moment it's been redeveloped in luxury condos and yachts (being within bugout distance of Hong Kong), so it might be rather more expensive than when it was ceded.

[4] "Liberated" by the french with a fair amount of domestic popular support. Attached to us by everyone not the french, because while all of the great powers wanted our territory, the only stable strategy in 1815 was for them to agree that none of them would get it.

[5] Having studied their latin and greek, the english, while they had their empire, made good use of "let's you and him fight."

I can’t take seriously any writing that considers “public intellectuals”.

I recently saw the twitter profile of a russian public intellectual that claimed he's learning Lakota.

Trolling or serious? My wife's been interested in Lakota ever since Dances With Wolves; I guess I could get her to write an email for me and see if he responds...

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